Love the piece. I love reading about evolutionary reasoning of the way things are.
I do wonder about the creation of the special category of "hyper norms" as a bit of special pleading in favor of explaining the particular destructiveness of our moment, but agree with the idea that it has been incentivized by the lack of disincentives.
Love the piece. I love reading about evolutionary reasoning of the way things are.
I do wonder about the creation of the special category of "hyper norms" as a bit of special pleading in favor of explaining the particular destructiveness of our moment, but agree with the idea that it has been incentivized by the lack of disincentives.
Yes, there is a danger that the concept of hyper-norms could be used in a special pleading way.
I read H L A Hart’s ‘The Concept of Law’ many years ago, so have not been citing it because I would need to re-read it to be confident in any such citation.
The work which really enabled me to get a useful grasp on norms is Cristina Bicchieri, ‘The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms’ (2006) and her ‘Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure and Change Social Norms’ (2017). She develops her analysis rigorously, based in part on behavioural lab work.
I was struck by how “free floating” moral norms seem to be in her analysis. Which I now see as a strength rather than a weakness. (For instance, Westerners tend to be more moral in labs than in real life; foragers less moral in labs than in real life: the latter live far more in a world of connections, the former behave differently when on display.)
The use of moral claims to dismiss concerns about structure is a pattern that, once you are alerted to it, keeps popping up. So I am confident the notion of hyper-norms is onto something, but agree one has to be careful in the use of it.
Love the piece. I love reading about evolutionary reasoning of the way things are.
I do wonder about the creation of the special category of "hyper norms" as a bit of special pleading in favor of explaining the particular destructiveness of our moment, but agree with the idea that it has been incentivized by the lack of disincentives.
In any case you got a new sub.
Thanks for the sub!
Yes, there is a danger that the concept of hyper-norms could be used in a special pleading way.
I read H L A Hart’s ‘The Concept of Law’ many years ago, so have not been citing it because I would need to re-read it to be confident in any such citation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Concept_of_Law
The work which really enabled me to get a useful grasp on norms is Cristina Bicchieri, ‘The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms’ (2006) and her ‘Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure and Change Social Norms’ (2017). She develops her analysis rigorously, based in part on behavioural lab work.
I was struck by how “free floating” moral norms seem to be in her analysis. Which I now see as a strength rather than a weakness. (For instance, Westerners tend to be more moral in labs than in real life; foragers less moral in labs than in real life: the latter live far more in a world of connections, the former behave differently when on display.)
The use of moral claims to dismiss concerns about structure is a pattern that, once you are alerted to it, keeps popping up. So I am confident the notion of hyper-norms is onto something, but agree one has to be careful in the use of it.